The iPhone

Let the praise or complaints begin.

Praise: Best cell phone around.
Complaint: Cingular. I'd have to pay twice as much with them to get close to what I get with T-Mobile.

I don't really care about the iPhone. I wanted to hear about Leopard. And, hopefully, an brand new Finder that's actually fast.

Best phone EVAR!

But, Cingular only :( With all my stupid Sprint contracts I can get one in, what, 3 years?

I like the idea behind the iPhone, but its like those ridiculously large Swiss Army Knives. Way too much **** for me.

Only EDGE, no UMTS. That's not good.
Price: $ 599 8 GB with contract. Quite high, hoped for less.

Eveything else: :thumbsup:

-t

It looks friggin awesome.

Complaints: 135g for a phone is just too damn much. 6cm is too wide. No UMTS, just EDGE.

Oh and we'll have to wait for Q4 2007 here in Europe...

Also, no networks support Visual Voice mail..

No mention of Canada. But I expect they'll work out a deal with Rogers, since Rogers is partnered with Yahoo, and it seems Apple is also now...

A few thoughts:

* Cingular. Ugh. Not that I have a problem with them. I hardly know about them. Just know that the GSM+EDGE network is not available up here in Montana. I guess I can hope - they do have "partners" up here.

* Apps - can 3rd parties write apps for it? I would guess so. But haven't seen anything about it.

* iChat - no iChat surprises me.

Other than those things, all I know is that I want one. :D

never been into phones....but it would be nice. i do have a 20GB iPod that i dont mind replacing wiht a 4GB widescreen iPod + phone.....

right now...sorta mixed feelings...it's pretty pricy. i have a year to think about it :D

Cingular - all the cost of Verizon with the coverage of Tmobile
Cingular charges $45/mo for unlimited data (EDGE only, no wifi), plus another $35/mo if you want to tether your computer; compare to Tmobile at $20/mo for unlimited data with tethering (plus $10/mo if you want unlimited wifi at their thousands of hotspots). And despite the latest improvements, GSM coverage still can't touch CDMA for coverage.

And the camera is a dealbreaker for me; no cameras at work and I'm not going to drop $500+ on a phone that sits at home all day.

Looks nice, I'd grab one this summer if it weren't for two things:

1) Price. Not that I wouldn't be getting my money's worth, but it's just a bit steep for me at the moment.
2) Cingular. I just signed a two-year contract with Verizon less than a month ago that I'd rather not break.

Beautiful phone, though.

How much w/o Cingular contract ?

$ 799 for 8 GB ?

Geezzz...

-t

Isn't that about the same as most smartphones?

I thought 3G = UTMS, but this phone is '3G' and 'EDGE'. What's the difference between UTMS and EDGE?

This bears repeating, I thought of it and then I forgot about it.

Honestly, all the SMS features and no iChat? Could this be a Yahoo! vs. AOL problem?

It is awesome looking. Come on guys, you all know you want it. The price is reasonable for a super iPod. The only downside is having to switch to Cingular, but I guess I'll need to do that.

1. Cingular=SWB. The Midwest was glad they left. Now they return as "Cingular"... SWB was the worst when it came to customer service. IMO it should come unlocked, and able to use with any provider. T-mobile blows them away.

2. Not feeling the design. I really liked the photoshopped widescreen design that was all over the net. It looks a bit busy. (the interface anyway)

3. Price... thumbs down

just my 2 cents. Staying with my razor.

Put aside the Cingular issue for a bit....

The phone has amazing features and impressive technology. I'm extremely jazzed about it, but I will have to wait for a while for the money. I already use Cingular and EDGE is available here now, I believe.

A little Mac OSX in my pocket is too charming for me to resist. The widgets, contacts, and especially the selective voicemail all made me smile really, really big.

Take the tour of all the features on Apple.com and tell me you hate the iPhone.

Does anyone else in Canada support GSM? I don't think there are any options other than Rogers.

8GB is a little small for my video collection, but this phone is so awesome that doesn't matter. Pricey, though.

EGDE = slow
UMTS = fast.

BIIGGGG difference.

-t

That's my other thing. The only way to get a widescreen ipod is to buy it as a phone? Did I miss something there?

Looks like something Sony would produce ... to me, at least (that's not saying I don't like the look of it, though)

I thought they said the phone only works with Cingular. They've made special arrangements to make the phone work with their network.

Er…Canadian? It's $599 here.

I agree completely. :thumbsdow

Seems a curious backwards step then?

Well, with OS X and WiFi on there, it probably wouldn't be long before someone writes an iChat client for the phone.

I'm assuming that a true 6G iPod is still forthcoming, as the iPhone only has 8 GB of memory, max. There's no way that Apple would simply stop makinng iPods bigger than that, or just stop updating the existing line.

In other words, I'd say that there are four types of iPods now: the standard video iPod, the Nano, the shuffle, and now the iPhone.

Fido I'm pretty sure, since they use the same network as Rogers now.

But Really, Rogers is the Leading company in every aspect within Canada, it's really a no-brainer to choose Rogers.

Yeah dont get me wrong I usually LOVE Apple design, (except for the big ipod microwave, ehem, I mean speaker) and I was anxiously awaiting this... what a let down.

Duh, you're right. Won't be available w/o contract.

So no point in arguing over unlocked prices...

-t

The bigmouthed turtle was wrong ...yet again, the Apple iPhone is VoIP capable.

I like it very much, but I wonder what carriers I'll be tied to. Telefónica probably. Amena/Orange is probably not in the picture. Not that I'm tied to the, I do use them now -- it's just that while all telecompanies are a bunch of sharks, Telefónica is the great white shark of them ;)

There were rumors Steve was planning on something with them. Most likely the iPhone.

Oh, and how long until Cisco sues over the name? (or have they reached an agreement?)

V

Good: it's pretty.

Bad:
> It costs a ton.
> It costs a ton and the useful features with EVDO will cost even more per month.
> It's Cingular-only. Do us Verizon customers just not matter?
> NO SCROLL WHEEL IN THE IPOD INTERFACE. I'm sorry, but is Apple insane? The scroll wheel is one of the primary reasons I've never switched to another drive-based music player. Apple comes out with this, and it uses uppy-downy navigation?
> No hardware scrolling for email. Blackberrys (P.S. RIMM's stock plummeted over 5% today during MacWorld's keynote) have a scroll wheel on the side.
> No syncing with popular productivity suites (Outlook, Entourage, Notes)

The LG chocolate is a beautiful phone. Now, take the chocolate's design and fiddle with it to make the outside MP3 part an iPod, and make a better interface (although the interface is moot on Verizon phones unless it's running PalmOS or Windows Mobile). Bam. iPhone Jr. You can even offer it in the nano colors to make it prettier.

When my contract is up for renewal with Verizon, I'll be getting another Motorla phone - probably the KRZR, or the LG chocolate.

I'm also extremely curious to see how good quality control and testing was with this thing - will early adopters have the same kinds of problems they had with the MB and MBP?

Also noted that there is no information on the speed of the processor in the device.

No. :thumbsdow

Plus you have to get Cingular.:thumbsdow

and it's expensive - like, seriously expensive.:thumbsdow

Too bad there wasn't a new iPod out there like this- though we are edging awfully close to it. Maybe next time around.

Give me an unlocked one and I would probably buy one today.

My impression of the interface is that finally somebody "got it" - a phone with extra features, but I don't have to fight the interface. Leave it to Apple.

I'm excited about the iPhone and I will definitely look into it when my contract is up in August.

This is going to be a big boost for Cingular. They now can offer something that no other carrier can. And with it will come people, lots of them.

The Google Maps application looks like something I would use all the time. I txt google all the time. Now I can just look things up by location and auto-dial them. That's hot.

I find it funny that in one show, Steve trotted on the Google and Yahoo guys. Yahoo didn't insist on Apple using their mapping software? Google didn't push GMail?

 
I was wondering about that. There are actually a couple of iPhone trademarks registered with the USPTO. I haven't seen one from Cisco. It appears that Apple would have a difficult time prosecuting an infringement suit over that name, since it's already been registered.

good point :thumbsdow i expect the regular ipod to get widescreen by christmas 2007 tho...

no handwriting recognition either ?

And it does look very "Sony", they should have gone with white(iPod).

the interface does seem pretty "busy".

and yeah, no iChat ? what gives ? maybe someone can write a widget for iChat that will work on this phone ?

I concur with Florida. :thumbsup:

V

I would definately think a 6G ipod is still coming. This phone might replace a nano but not a video ipod with a 80g hard drive. The market for this phone will be limited to people on Cingular and those willing to go to the trouble to switch. It's a cool looking phone with awesome features but its just too expensive. Also, Cingular has terrible service in my area--calls constantly dropping. The service plans are more expensive than I what I have also.

Yeah, seems likely. I hope the CRTC gets off its ass and finally mandate number portability. It's the only thing that's preventing me from switching from Fido. I really don't want to lose my number. It's wierd, since Rogers owns Fido, you'd think they'd make it easy to switch.

I'd consider buying it MSRP, but it doesn't look like Apple will allow that. These things are going to make a mint on eBay.

I would assume Widgets would be very easy to adapt to the required dimensions and any new events they need to be aware of.

As for more advanced apps, since it's OSX or a subset of it, I would assume that XCode will be updated to be able to compile to the phone and the required APIs or Frameworks be released. I doubt they would make it difficult for developers to port apps. Imagine Skype on this thing!

I think this is less of an oversight and more of a deliberate omission. Since Apple is in bed with Google now, maybe the new iChat in Leopard and the iChat in iPhone will be powered by Google Talk.

A few other observations:

If this is a light version of OSX, how much storage space will it occupy? If it's more than 1Gig, clearly the 4GB wouldn't be that much of a good value since there's not much space left over for photos/music, and especially video.

As for it being too large and doing too much, I think Apple is going to take the same approach to the iPhone 'platform' as it did for the iPod: go for the high end first, and then tackle the mid/lower range. I expect Apple will release an iPhone nano in 2008.

Macworld 2007 play-by-play | Crave : The gadget blog

Cisco calls CNET News.com reporter with a statement about Apple's use of the term "iPhone" for its new product. "Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statements that were distributed to them last night and that address a few remaining items we expect to receive a signed agreement today."

I certainly hope that 3rd party apps are available - it looks like the ultimate portable platform for them. I've got a few in mind...

As far as price goes, when the iPod was introduced I thought it was overpriced and doomed as a result... but I hadn't recognized the degree to which in consumer electronics ease of use is the name of the game... and I can see that the iPhone has it in spades.

There are features in my current phone and my camera which I just don't use because they're so hard to get to.

What surprises me is that it looks like Jobs didn't show off any voice recognition features. When I'm driving, the ability to call using voice with my bluetooth headset is key. I don't want to futz around with a visual UI, no matter how elegant, when I'm driving. (In fact, I don't like to even talk on the phone when driving... but it happens). So what does the iPhone offer in terms of voice controls? OS X offers some degree of support - I'd like to see how that applies to the phone... and even iPod functionality. If they haven't developed that, they should.

Too expensive and it's Cingular. I need Verizon for work.

No money from me on this, Apple.

Apple - iPhone

Go to it, enjoy all the demos.

This thing is amazing. I'd pay upwards of $1000 for it.

You'd pay more than desktop computer for phone with way less storage and capabilities?


:rolleyes:

I wonder if the next LCD's apple incorporates in their products will use the same touchscreen tech as the iphone, that'd be cool.

Yes, it is. EDGE is 2005ish.

-t

I bet if Verizon was approached, they insisted that Apple use their ugly "red" UI and Apple told them to jump in a lake.

I would prefer Verizon, too, as that is the only major carrier around here (I guess Alltel, but are they "major"?)

Verizon is such a control freak...